Tiny Tip 11

This is the eleventh installment of a 20 part series of tiny tips to help improve your fortunes in pinball. I hope you find it useful, and share with friends if inspired!

To view past topics, navigate to the Pinball Tip Archives located here: Pinball Tip Archives

TARGET SHOOTING

There will be many pinball moments when the difference between winning or losing is determined by your ability to set up and shoot an important target. Practice is helpful, of course. It’s also helpful to minimize risk and optimize your ability to strike targets with precision and repeatability.

SHOOT FROM THE CRADLE

Shoot the ball from a cradled position whenever possible. Shooting the ball from a cradled position offers many significant advantages over shooting on the fly:

Elimination of unpredictable ball spin
Consistent, repeatable ball speed
Slower ball speed, making it easier to use playfield artwork as a reference when determining the perfect timing to strike your target

Shooting from a cradled position is also a skill that is more easily practiced with repetition so you can fine tune your timing in advance of an important game.

Use Playfield Artwork to Calibrate Flipper Timing

DIRECTION AND SPEED

Flipper rotation influences both the direction and the speed that the ball travels up the playfield.

Illustration 2 shows 3 ball positions on a flipper. As flipper travels from the bottom to the uppermost flipper position, ball 3 travels much farther than ball 1. Greater distance over time means that the ball flipped from position 3 will travel much faster and farther up the playfield than ball flipped from position 1.

Flipper timing is critical to deliver the ball where you want it to go. And while shooting on the fly can be more challenging to achieve precise results, the added speed of a ball traveling down an inlane can provide the added boost you need to climb a steep ramp or fully advance a vari-target.

Ball Position on Flipper

Timing Affects Both Speed and Direction

For a masterclass on the topic, visit the Youtube tutorial from Abe Flips titled Pinball Skills - Aiming and Shooting.

Stay tuned for more tips to help you improve your game, and for deeper dives check out my forthcoming project published with Schiffer Books: Pinball: A Quest For Mastery, hitting book stores June 28, 2026.

Stay curious, practice with intention, and keep it fun: your fortunes in pinball (and in life) are sure to improve.

BONUS CONTENT

Thanks again to my friends at Pintastic New England for an amazing weekend of pinball and fun! My seminar on the topic of boosting fun and boosting scores is now up on YouTube: check it out here: Pintastic Seminar